


The Initiative

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [27]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For years, Nick Fury has been keeping a list of extraordinary people, people who could one day be called upon to save the world.  Coulson, Clint, and River would probably be very surprised to learn that they are on that list.  They would be even more surprised if they ever learned the reason why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Initiative

**Author's Note:**

> Is there a rank higher than kudos? If so, it goes to my beta, **like-a-raven**. New job, moving house, and she still keeps kicking my drafts into publishable shape. 
> 
> The events of this story take place on the same night as the events of _Hidden In Plain Sight_ , while River is stumbling onto some interesting information about a certain secret base. And elsewhere. . .well, let's just say that it's a busy night in the _Marvelous Tale_ 'verse.
> 
> Thank you for stopping by and reading, and for all of you in the U.S. I hope you're having a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

_July 4, 2011_  
_SHIELD Headquarters, New York_  
_The wee small hours_

It was 0200 hours, and Nick Fury was in his office at his desk. 

He’d passed a lot of sleepless nights in this room for a lot of different reasons over the course of his SHIELD career. This particular watch in the night was being sponsored by three of his most valued agents. Sometimes Fury swore that Coulson, Barton, and Song were out to turn his non-existent hair grey. Coulson had been the one to tweak Death’s nose this time. The team’s luck had held, though, and he was going to live to tell the tale. 

Coulson, Barton, and Song were out of trouble for the time being, safely locked down in the Tree House. Fury had debated with himself about rerouting Strike Team Delta to the classified base. It had been Coulson’s best chance of survival, but there had been other considerations that the Director had had to weigh. Fury had taken great care to make sure that the Tree House’s existence was need-to-know, highest clearance only. 

Ultimately the scales had balanced in Coulson’s favor. In all likelihood, Fury would have briefed him, Barton, and Song on the Tree House at some point. This had just moved up the timetable. Tomorrow when they got back they’d have a perfunctory _this information goes no further_ conversation, and that would be that.

In the meantime, this had been the sort of day that bred insomnia. Fury had never been much of a hand at idle pursuits, so that left work. Maybe because his agents were already occupying his mind tonight, Fury had pulled out his pet project. 

A small data box sat in the middle of his desk. Handy things, these little black cubes. Fury called this one the _Treasure Chest._ It went with the eye patch. Contrary to popular opinion, he _did_ have something that resembled a sense of humor.

The Treasure Chest projected a holographic display over Fury’s desk. Seven digital dossiers, ranked from _Least Viable_ to _Most Likely Prospects_ according to Fury’s scale. Seven individuals. It wasn’t a lot to show for years of work.

The Avengers Initiative. It sounded like such a simple concept.

_The purpose of the Avengers Initiative is to identify and recruit people with exceptional abilities to act as a specialized response team in the event of a catastrophic incident or incidents that threaten global security._

The actual execution of the Initiative was a bit more complicated. Fury had always known that it wouldn’t be an easy undertaking. A less tenacious person probably would have shelved this project. Even the World Security Council dismissed it as a pipe dream, as wishful and dangerously idealistic thinking.

Nick Fury was willing to be patient, though. He might lack charm, he might lack compassion, some people would say that he lacked basic human decency, but one quality that Fury had in abundance was conviction. He knew in his gut that the Avengers Initiative was something that he needed to pursue. One day, the world would need people who could fight battles that no one else could. It was only a matter of time. 

What had happened in New Mexico two months ago proved that. The world was changing and they had to be prepared. But finding the right people was a slow process.

Fury took a sip of lukewarm coffee as he looked at the holographic profiles. This was the extent of the Avengers Initiative so far. Seven prospects: five viable candidates and two wild cards.

He pulled the two wild card profiles to the forefront. These two weren’t actually in the running to be Avengers, though Fury was willing to tentatively classify them as allies. It was a shame; they were both incredibly formidable. 

Neither one of them was human though, and part of the reason for the Initiative was that humanity needed to have its own protectors. Its own heroes. 

Thor and the Doctor had both acted in Earth’s defense and neither one had conveyed any overt hostile intent. They seemed to have an affinity for this world, but it wasn’t _their_ world. Their motives were unpredictable and they couldn’t necessarily be counted upon to respond quickly to a threat.

Thor was especially concerning. Coulson, Barton, and Song had all reported that Thor and his compatriots had ultimately fought on SHIELD’s side in New Mexico. But it had been another Asgardian, Thor’s own brother, in fact, who had caused the conflict in the first place. Puente Antiguo had been half leveled and they were damn lucky that the casualty count hadn’t been higher. 

Asgard was the home world of the Tesseract; the Doctor had confirmed that. So, not only did Asgard have the ability to invade their planet, it also had them so far outgunned that Earth might as well try to fight them with slingshots. 

Asgard’s past history with Earth was also something that caused Fury some concern. These people had set themselves up as gods on Earth thousands of years ago. Who was to say that they might not decide it was time to bring some of that old time religion back? There were humans out there—large groups of them, even—who might welcome them with open arms. 

Bowing before a supposedly more advanced race of people was not a road that Earth needed to go down.

Fury had fewer concerns about the Doctor, and that was something he didn’t get to say very often. Personally, Fury thought that the Doctor was capable of whipping Asgard’s collective ass if he chose to do so, which _should_ make him the bigger potential threat. 

There was only one Time Lord, though, and for whatever reason he seemed to have adopted Earth. He bonded with humans. That was one of the reasons Fury didn’t seriously object to Coulson, Barton, and Song running off with him on a regular basis.

Fury would also cop to some personal bias. He’d dealt with the Doctor before personally, though the man Fury had known had borne little resemblance to the Doctor’s current incarnation. The Doctor that Fury had met, way back when, had just come out of the Time War. He hadn’t been what you’d call warm and fuzzy, never mind whimsical. He’d been guarded, confrontational, and not a little bit dark.

There had been kindness underneath it, though. Rose had been good at drawing it out, and Fury had wondered if that wasn’t the reason the Doctor had chosen her as a companion. There was no denying that the Doctor was a good person to have at your back in a crisis. He’d saved Fury’s ass back in the day. He’d lost his eye, but he’d walked out with his life against some laughably bad odds.

So far the Doctor had been on their side. God help them the day he wasn’t.

So much for the wild cards. Fury waved his hand, sweeping those profiles to the side, and turned his attention to the next two. 

Stark, Tony, aka _Iron Man._

This man was Fury’s first round draft pick for the Avengers Initiative. He was brilliant, he was well-known and respected in military circles, and ever since he’d developed the Iron Man suit he had actually gone on a few save-the-world sprees all on his own. His psych profile wasn’t the most stable, though. The evaluation that Agent Song had done on him earlier this year had recommended that Stark prove his dependability before he was given serious consideration as a member of the Initiative. 

Banner, Bruce, aka _The Hulk._

Even former Director Downing, who had otherwise wholly endorsed the idea of the Avengers Initiative, had raised an eyebrow at that name. Banner had been a brilliant physicist in his own right before his accident. An experiment with gamma radiation had left him with the ability to take on a form that was as unstoppable as it was unstable. 

Unlike Stark, Banner had never been directly approached by SHIELD. The man was understandably gun shy about government organizations, given the unpleasant run-ins he’d had with the U.S. Army. He lived under the radar, in hiding. SHIELD kept tabs on him, though. There were other groups out there who would be eager to try to harness the Hulk as a weapon. SHIELD kept those people at bay.

He waved these two profiles to the side as well. That left the first three people that Fury had placed on his list of potential Avengers.

Coulson, Phillip, codename _Aerie._

Barton, Clint, codename _Hawkeye._

Song, River, codename _Talon._

They weren’t aware that they were on Fury’s list. It would probably come as a hell of a shock to them if they ever found out.

They weren’t superheroes in the conventional sense, if the word _conventional_ could even be applied when you were talking about things like superheroes. Song came the closest to fitting that mold. She wasn’t entirely human, she had traveled in Time, and she had one hell of an origin story. 

Coulson and Barton? They were human. Pure, unadulterated, blatantly human. No alien genes, no mutations, no supernatural powers unless you counted Barton’s uncanny hand-eye coordination. What they did possess were dedication, brains, fierce loyalty, and a particular (and, in Fury’s opinion, rare) brand of innate goodness. Fury wanted human heroes for a human world. Coulson and Barton were two of the best examples of humanity he knew.

Besides Coulson, Barton, and Song went together. Strike Team Delta was a package deal. It had been from the very beginning.

Fury deactivated the Treasure Chest and pressed his thumb into an almost unnoticeably shallow indentation in the edge of his desk. Some people might say it was a spy-game affectation for the Director of SHIELD to have a hidden compartment in his desk coded to his fingerprints and DNA. Fury had been in the game long enough to know that, in the business of keeping secrets, there was no such thing as overkill.

The panel in the top of Fury’s desk slid open. He set the Treasure Chest back in its designated spot beside a small pile of letters. In contrast to the high tech bit of hardware, the letters were old. The paper was heavier, rougher, and a little duller than what you’d find in a modern copy room. The content had clearly been pecked out on an old, manual typewriter.

Fury had never been one-hundred-percent copacetic about these letters, but such was his life. He was the Director of SHIELD. Total peace of mind was for other people. The letters came from a trusted source and they were useful, even if half the time they didn’t make a damn bit of sense at first reading. Their usefulness had come to outweigh any nebulous concerns he might have about them.

He’d come a long way since he’d first been briefed.

*****

_June 1991_  
 _SHIELD Headquarters, New York_

Nick Fury sat across from his boss, wondering if he was witnessing the onset of an extremely colorful brand of dementia.

He must have been telegraphing to an embarrassing degree, too, because Director Downing broke off mid-sentence. She raised an amused eyebrow at him.

“Yes, Nicholas? You look distressed.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re wondering if the old woman is losing her grip on reality, aren’t you?”

Fury opened his mouth to deny it, but then closed it again. There was never any point in trying to get anything past Meg Downing. The woman was seventy-three years old and still sharper than most people a third of her age.

“It’s just that what you’re telling me sounds like a _Ripley’s Believe It or Not_ episode,” Fury said.

His eyes drifted down to the envelope that lay on the desk in front of Downing. 

“It’s really not all that mysterious.” Downing picked up the envelope, twirling it between delicate fingers. “These letters are. . .well, think of them _sealed orders._ They were entrusted to me some years ago. Each one is marked with the date on which it is to be opened and the orders carried out.”

“And you always follow these orders? No matter what they are?” Fury asked.

That was the thing he had a hard time wrapping his head around: SHIELD following orders from outside the chain of command.

Well, sort of.

“No matter what they are,” Downing said with a nod. “The orders are to help guide us to and through certain future events that the writers of the letters deemed very important.”

Sealed orders that could predict the future. Never a dull moment, working for SHIELD.

It should be the sort of story that Fury would dismiss as pure craziness. The thing was, Fury had met a man once who traveled in time (or so he and his companion had claimed). Fury hadn’t witnessed it personally, but the Doctor and Rose had still had a high enough weird quotient that Fury had believed it.

“Why are you telling me about these letters now?” Fury asked.

He’d been Downing’s second-in-command for a year. This was the first he’d heard of them.

“For two reasons,” Downing said. “The first is because I can’t run SHIELD forever. I’m not planning to abandon this mortal coil for a while, but I will have to retire one day. When I do, I plan to put your forth as my successor, and you’ll need to know about them. Secondly,” Downing slid the letter across the desk to Fury, “the rule is that the letters can only be opened on their designated date and by the person they’re addressed to. And, if you will note, this one is addressed to both of us.”

She was right. Fury picked up the letter. _Director Meg Downing & Nicholas J. Fury_ was typed neatly on the envelope.

“So.” Downing was smiling. “Would you care to do the honors?”

The letter was short, only two brief lines. Fury read them aloud.

_“Lt. Phillip James Coulson is stationed in Kuwait with the United States Army. Recruit him.”_

Truthfully, he’d been expecting something a little more profound. Fury looked up at Downing. “Who the fuck is Phillip Coulson? And why do we care?”

“I have no idea,” Downing replied. “But that’s the order, which means that somehow he’s going to wind up being important. We’ll find him and recruit him. The reason why will become clear in time.” Downing rose from her chair. “This will probably be one of the most difficult things I ever ask of you, Nicholas. You have to take these orders on faith.”

*****

_July 4, 2011_

Downing had been right about that. Operating on faith _had_ been hard for Fury. He’d learned to take it in stride, though. And as time went on, Downing had let him in on more and more information: exactly who the letters were from, what their vested interest in SHIELD was, and what their goals were, among other things. That hadn’t made the situation any less weird (quite the contrary in fact) but Fury got used to rolling with it.

Downing kept all of the letters in a highly secured safe, doling them out on their appropriate dates, and not a day earlier. Before he was even formally promoted to Director, Fury started to get letters of his own, addressed solely to him. He always shared their contents with Downing, though. Downing also continued to receive letters, but she was more selective in what she shared. Sometimes Fury would watch her just smile and tuck the letter away. In one instance she’d actually burst out laughing at what her letter said. 

He’d kind of been dying to know what the contents of that one had been, but Downing hadn’t been talking.

The letters were never exactly informative, especially coming from people who had an idea of where the future was heading. They were all, in a word, _cryptic._ Half the time they didn’t make a damn bit of sense until way down the road. They never featured big or important events. The information they imparted usually seemed random and completely inconsequential, like the order to recruit some random soldier out of Kuwait.

Not that Coulson didn’t almost immediately prove himself to be an exemplary agent, but it had taken years and two more letters for Fury to realize that he was part of something bigger.

Fury lifted the letters out of the secret compartment in his desk, pulling the one from the bottom. Downing had let him keep this, the letter ordering Coulson’s recruitment. 

That had been the foundation.

Fury thumbed through the letters until he found the one dated July 1999.

_Phillip Coulson will ask your permission to recruit a young man named Clint Barton. Grant it._

Fury laid that letter aside with the first, then flipped through the letters again until he found the third, dated September 2005.

_The World Security Council will issue a kill order on River Song, aka The Reaper. Send Clint Barton to do the job._

Fury had had a good idea of how that one would play out. By that time, he’d known a bit about River Song, things that weren’t in her original SHIELD file. He’d known why the letter writers were invested in her fate. 

It had been kind of fun to fake righteous professional anger when Coulson had called him from Sofia to tell him that Barton had flouted his orders, taken the Reaper alive, and wanted to bring her home to SHEILD.

Coulson, Barton, and Song had been meant to be a team. They had been handpicked by people who knew what was to come. If Fury was choosing Avengers from the ranks of SHIELD, he couldn’t imagine anyone better than the three of them. 

Fury put the letters away with the Treasure Chest and had just resealed the compartment when his phone rang.

That couldn’t be good. Nothing good came of a call at three o’clock in the morning. The message on the screen noted that the call was being routed through the SHIELD communications hub from some random recovery team in Greenland.

“Hello?”

The agent other end of the line was talking very fast, something about old plane wreckage in an ice field. The team had apparently cracked into the wreckage and found. . .

Fury sat bolt upright in his chair, switching his phone to his left ear just in case his right was playing tricks on him.

“Say that again,” he ordered. “You found _what?_ ”

_To Be Continued. . ._


End file.
